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Point to Pinnacle: Truganini Track

Sunday 12 August (97 days to go)

Not far from my house is the Truganini Track, which is a 2.1 km medium grade bush walk from the Cartwright Reserve on Sandy Bay Road up to the Mt Nelson Signal Station, an elevation of 350 metres. Ever since I found out it was there, I’d wanted to walk it and I put it on my list of things I was going to do this year.

Lils Sis said she’d do it with me, so we booked in a day to do it and I was ready. Then on Thursday, she pulled out because she wasn’t feeling well. I was already committed so I decided to do it by myself. I need to get some hill walks in before the Point to Pinnacle and I thought this would be a good test of my ability.

For some reason, I’d thought it was a two-hour one-way walk so I thought I’d need a whole morning to do it and that I’d get there in time to have coffee and get Slabs to come and pick me up late morning.

I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning, but as I was trying to talk myself into getting up I realised I didn’t need to leave until it was light. It would have been stupid to go on a bushwalk in the dark! So I left home at about 7.00 am. The first part of the walk was easy, along the main road to the start of the track. Then the proper walk began.

The forest was very thick almost from the very start but the first thing I noticed was that I could hear chickens, so even though I was surrounded by forest and couldn’t see any houses, I could tell I was very close to civilisation.

According to Tastrails this is wet sclerophyll forest and this section “can often be quite muddy after wet weather”. I can confirm this is 100 per cent true. It was very muddy and slippery and I learned from experience that cutting grass is not a good thing to hold onto if you think you’re about to fall.It occurred to me after that incident that I didn’t have a first aid kit and I had no plan for what I’d do if I actually injured myself on this track. I was fairly confident that wouldn’t happen but you hear all these stories about underprepared bushwalkers getting lost and having to have Search & Rescue come and look for them and I was doing this walk alone on a track I didn’t know and . . . Barb, the track is two kilometres. You are no more than a kilometre from a main road wherever you are. There are relatively new looking footprints on the track; people probably come through here every day. You have a phone; you aren’t in the wilderness. If anything happens someone will find you pretty quickly.Okay, that sorted I carried on. It’s definitely not an easy climb. Apart from the slipperiness, many of the steps are big, especially for someone with short legs like me, so climbing was awkward. It was also rocky underfoot, so not the most comfortable walk.As you continue on the walk, the forest changes to dry sclerophyll and you can start to see glimpses of the river between the trees. You can see that you’ve climbed a long way (if you weren’t already feeling it in your legs and your breath).As I got closer to the top, I noticed a structure and realised I was back near civilisation. I have no idea what this was, but the track started to flatten out. I came across the Truganini Memorial, which is dedicated to the Tasmanian Aboriginal people and their descendants. This was very simple and moving. I realised I was at the end and it had taken me less than an hour to complete the climb. It was only just 8.30 and the coffee shop wouldn’t open for another 30 minutes. There wasn’t a lot to see. The view wasn’t very clear. I took a couple of photos but they weren’t very good because the sky was misty.

I was glad to have made it to the top and ticked this trail off my list. It was a nice, challenging Sunday morning walk.